Hampshire Trust Bank has enhanced the lending criteria on its buy-to-let and home in multiple occupation (HMO) 5 Year Fixed Rate, enabling customers to potentially borrow more.

As part of the enhancement, minimum interest cover ratio (ICR) thresholds for residential BTL portfolio landlords have been reduced to 125% for a company and 140% for an individual, with minimum ICR thresholds for HMOs with over six bedrooms dropping to 140% for a company and 155% for an individual. This comes less than three weeks after the bank increased the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio to 75% and maximum loan size to £5m on the same product. For full details see our BTL and HMO 5 Year Fixed Rate product guide.

In addition, as part of the bank’s ongoing work to further improve broker service, Richard Winston has been appointed as Business Development Manager in the Specialist Mortgages team. Richard joins the bank from Mortgages for Business, with previous positions including relationship management roles at Santander and HSBC.

Anna Lewis, Head of Sales, Specialist Mortgages, at Hampshire Trust Bank, said: “We are committed to the broker sector and to providing the financial solutions they need. This is the latest enhancement we have made to our BTL and HMO product and we believe this will help our broker partners to better support their portfolio landlord customers. We have more enhancements in the pipeline.

“In addition to improving and developing our products, we are focused on growing our team so we can better support our intermediaries across the country. We are delighted Richard has joined us, he is an excellent addition to our team.”

Hampshire Trust Bank provides a range of specialist mortgage solutions including bridging, development exit finance, buy-to-let and HMO, with loan amounts of up to £5m, and commercial and semi-commercial mortgages, with loan amounts of up to £2.5m.

Any property used as security may be repossessed if loan repayments and other obligations are not met.